For the first time in my medical lifetime, the U.S. government has told the American people the truth about highly processed food.

The 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans mark the most consequential shift in federal nutrition policy in decades. After more than forty years of advice that coincided with rising obesity, diabetes, fatty liver disease, and diet-driven chronic illness, the federal government has finally acknowledged a basic reality: what we eat matters more than how many calories we count.

That may sound obvious. But for generations, federal nutrition policy promoted low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets, subsidized highly-processed food, and treated chronic disease as inevitable rather than preventable. The result is a population where more than 70 percent of adults are overweight or obese, nearly one in three adolescents has prediabetes, and close to 90 percent of healthcare spending goes toward chronic disease management rather than prevention.¹

The new Guidelines represent a genuine course correction. They’re not perfect. But they are historically important—and politically revealing.

A Break from Decades of Nutritional Dogma

The most important shift in the new Guidelines is their explicit rejection of highly processed foods (which most people historically understand as junk food). For the first time, federal nutrition policy names highly processed products—those laden with refined industrially produced carbohydrates, added sugars, chemical additives, emulsifiers, artificial sweeteners, and industrial dyes—as a central driver of chronic disease.

This is not controversial in the scientific literature. Large epidemiologic studies consistently show that higher consumption of highly processed foods is associated with obesity, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, depression, and increased all-cause mortality.² Longer term studies are needed, but short-term controlled feeding trials demonstrate that people eating highly processed diets consume more calories and gain more weight—even when macronutrients are matched.³ (Free Download: Why Highly-Processed Foods Are So Unhealthy.)

What is controversial is admitting this at the policy level, because highly processed foods are profitable, heavily subsidized, and deeply embedded in the American food system. Naming them represents not just a scientific shift, but a political one.

Protein Is Back—and That Matters

The new Guidelines also update protein recommendations by raising the daily target from the minimum amount required to prevent protein deficiency to 1.2–1.6 grams per kilogram (0.55-0.73 grams per pound) of body weight. This aligns with modern research on muscle preservation, metabolic health, satiety, glucose regulation, and healthy aging.⁴ However, the upper end of the protein range is intended for people who regularly do strength training and are focused on building or maintaining muscle.

For decades, Americans were advised to minimize protein—particularly animal protein—despite mounting evidence that inadequate protein intake contributes to sarcopenia, insulin resistance, frailty, and metabolic decline. The new recommendations explicitly include eggs, meat, poultry, seafood, and dairy alongside plant proteins such as legumes, rejecting the idea that nutrition policy should be driven by ideology rather than physiology.

In a rapidly aging population, this change alone could have enormous public-health implications. (Learn More: How to Double Your Protein Intake.)

The End of the Low-Fat Era

Another quiet but significant shift is the acceptance of full-fat dairy. Previous Guidelines pushed low-fat or nonfat dairy based on the assumption that saturated fat was inherently dangerous. That assumption has not held up.

Large observational studies and randomized trials increasingly show neutral—or even beneficial—associations between full-fat dairy consumption and cardiometabolic health.⁵ The food matrix matters. Cheese is not the same as processed meat. Yogurt is not the same as sugar-sweetened dairy substitutes.

The new Guidelines reflect this nuance, even if they stop short of fully abandoning outdated saturated-fat limits. Genetics also play a role and more nuance and research is required to personalize fat recommendations.

Acknowledging Metabolic Reality

Perhaps the most underappreciated change is a single sentence acknowledging that some individuals with chronic disease may benefit from lower-carbohydrate diets.

This is a major departure from decades of carbohydrate-centric advice. Type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and insulin resistance are not calorie-balance problems; they are disorders of carbohydrate intolerance and hormonal dysregulation. To some degree this affects 93 percent of the American population.⁶ Numerous clinical trials now demonstrate that carbohydrate restriction can improve glycemic control and, in some cases, induce remission of type 2 diabetes.⁷

Recognizing this doesn’t mandate one diet for everyone. It acknowledges biological diversity and the need for personalization of diets—and that matters.

Where the Guidelines Still Fall Short

Despite their progress, the Guidelines retain several legacy assumptions that deserve further research.

First, the recommendation to limit saturated fat to less than 10 percent of calories remains poorly supported by causal evidence and further research is needed.The health effects of saturated fat depend on the food source, metabolic context, and what replaces it.

Replacing saturated fat with refined carbohydrates worsens outcomes; replacing it with whole foods does not.⁷ Future Guidelines should reflect this distinction.

Second, whole grains are still broadly recommended without sufficient attention to glycemic variability. For many individuals with insulin resistance or autoimmune disease, even whole grains can worsen metabolic health. Vegetables, legumes, and tubers often perform better—and personalization matters.

Third, dairy is presented as universally beneficial without acknowledging lactose intolerance, casein sensitivity, or immune reactivity, which affect a substantial portion of the population. (How’s your health? Take this quiz and get a personlized report.)

Finally, while the Guidelines nod toward individual variation, they remain rooted in population averages. We now have the tools—biomarkers, continuous glucose monitoring, genetics, and wearable data—to personalize nutrition at scale. These tools are not widely accessible yet, but eventually Federal policy must catch up to that reality.

The Political Context Matters

These Guidelines emerge at a moment of growing bipartisan recognition that chronic disease is not simply a personal failure but a systemic one. For decades, federal policy incentivized cheap calories over nutrient density, treatment over prevention, and pharmaceutical management over food-based solutions.

Correcting course will require more than better advice. It will require aligning nutrition research, agricultural subsidies, food labeling laws, school lunch programs, food marketing and healthcare reimbursement with nutritional reality. (BTW, this is exactly what I cover in my new book, Food Fix Uncensored—how policy shapes what ends up on your plate, and what you can do to make the best choices for yourself, your family, and the planet.)

The Guidelines are a necessary first step—but not a sufficient one.

A Foundation, Not a Finish Line

The 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines deserve credit for restoring scientific integrity to federal nutrition policy. They reject highly processed food, restore protein and fat to their rightful place, and acknowledge metabolic diversity.

But the work isn’t finished.

The next generation of Guidelines must go further—toward nuance, personalization, as well as significant Federal funding of nutrition research to advance the science.

For the first time in decades, that future feels possible.

References

1. Centers for Disease Control and...

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